As a guest on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program about a month ago, Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, was being interviewed by Mike Barnicle. Asked the question by Barnicle, “What would you do, if elected, about Aleppo?” Looking puzzled, Johnson replied, “And what is Aleppo?” Barnicle replied, “You’re kidding.” and then added, “Aleppo is in Syria. It’s the epicenter of the refugee crisis.” Johnson’s response was, “OK, got it, got it.”
The truth is that no candidate knows everything about everything but there are some bits of basic world events that should probably be available almost instantaneously by candidates.
As Barnicle explained, Aleppo is the epicenter of the refugee crisis in Syria. Only a few years ago Obama was drawing a ‘red line’ regarding Syria’s President Assad using chemical weapons against his own people. His lips even pronounced that Assad had to go. In August 2011, Mr. Obama made the following pronouncement, “The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for Assad to step aside.”
Five years later our President’s words ring hollow as the tragedy of Aleppo unfolds and the lives of Syrian men, women and children are bombed and chlorine gassed into eternity. The bombing is from the coordinated efforts of Obama’s ‘former’ friend Vladimir Putin and the air forces of Russia and Syria.
Most of Aleppo’s hospitals have been reduced to bits and pieces of concrete, stone and metal and only a few doctors and healthcare workers remain. With three of four pumping stations disabled, potable water availability is a crisis. Nearly a half-million people have been annihilated and 4.8 refugees have been created out of a nation that only a few years ago had a population of about 17 million people.
Consider the details of what President Bashar al-Assad has done to his country and the world. Those millions of dissidents that wanted more rights and freedoms have been eliminated (killed) while millions have been converted to refugees and the burgeoning responsibility of other nations.
The result is that with the sympathy and support of Russia and Iran, Assad has flaunted NATO and all free nations of the world. The United States, Germany, France, UK and other nations have now assumed the integration of these millions of refugees into their (our) countries. Obama, the UN and other nations have been spectators who preached the downfall of Assad; they watched and did nothing as he strengthened his tyrannical grip of Syria.
The world has learned no lessons from the sad and deadly days of Sarajevo and Dubrovnik in what is now Bosnia & Herzegovina that declared sovereignty on October 15, 1991. The coastal city of Dubrovnik was under siege from the autumn of 1991 to mid-year 1992. The city of Sarajevo was under siege for four years until 1996. Serving as President of both Serbia and Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic was charged with crimes against humanity in May of 1999 and was found dead in his prison cell on March 11, 2006 in The Hague before the trial was complete and a ruling issued.
Milosevic was called the ‘Balkan Butcher’ and other derogatory names for his deadly efforts at ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Will Assad receive recognition as a ‘criminal against humanity’ or will the world’s leaders opine how diplomacy failed when tyrants and combatants would not listen to the words of wisdom of the UN, Obama and others?
World leaders and public opinion are selective in both criticism and action. For example a person living in the security and peace of a free country may overlook the death and destruction in another part of the world. Free nations may deny arms to citizens of other countries who seek freedom then excuse their denials of support through a litany of pretext and subterfuge.
What should we learn from the likes of Assad, Milosevic, Putin and the Mullahs of Iran? Experience warns us that temerity, hesitation and uncertainty will often be met by tyranny. Diplomacy is bargaining, negotiation and mediation. Subsequent to diplomatic agreements, free nations follow the rules; tyrants follow their plans of domination and omnipotence.
